Racing NSW boss Peter V'landys pushing to change date of Melbourne Cup
It’s the race that stops the nation, but Sydney racing boss Peter V'landys wants Victoria to move the Melbourne Cup to a later date in November.
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New South Wales’ racing boss wants Victoria to consider moving its historic Melbourne Cup to a later date in November.
The 150-year-old ‘race that stops the nation’ is traditionally run on the first Tuesday of November, but Racing NSW chief executive Peter V'landys says moving the event could help free up the country’s crowded Spring calendar.
“I’ve got no doubt the Melbourne Cup would work if it was run on the second, third or fourth Tuesday in November, it would make no difference,” he told The Australian.
“The Melbourne Cup will always be the race that stops the nation, it doesn’t matter when it is run.”
The comments will likely anger Victoria Racing Club (VRC) officials, who have accused V'landys of trying to steal attention away from the cup in the past by introducing new, richer races in Sydney.
The Everest, Australia’s richest horse race worth an eye-watering $14 million, was added to the NSW racing calendar in 2017 and will take place in Randwick on the same day as Victoria’s Caulfield Cup this year, while The Golden Eagle, worth a cool $7.5 million, will also run in Rosehill for the first time this year.
In comparison, the prizemoney for this year’s Melbourne Cup was only recently upped from $7.3 million to $8 million.
“This kind of single-minded determination to knock off Victoria just infuriates me to be honest,” VRC chairperson Amanda Elliot said earlier this year.
“We all know that we have geographic boundaries that sometimes gets a bit pushed and pulled and we're all doing our best for our own jurisdictions, but at the end of the day, the Australian racing industry is the one we care about,” she said.
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But V'landys told 7 News in an interview on Tuesday that if Victoria was really interested in the national racing scene, it needed to be more flexible.
“It's hurting Victorian racing, let alone national racing,” he said.
“They're stuck on the first Tuesday in November and good luck to them, that's been a tradition, but as I said, sometimes tradition can actually lead you to perish.
“I just think it doesn't work for all the other race clubs down here the way it is at the moment,” he added.
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Meanwhile, Melbourne Racing Club’s CEO Josh Blanksby told 7 News he was open to change.
“The first Tuesday in November is sacrosanct, according to some,” he said. “If you take Peter's lead, should we be reviewing that? Times change. The weather is much better in that space (later in November) and could the pattern work a lot better?
“From our perspective, selfishly speaking, we come right on the back of the AFL grand final and it's difficult to try and get people's mind to turn to racing season.
“They have just come off some pretty big finals and you ask them to come again.”
Originally published as Racing NSW boss Peter V'landys pushing to change date of Melbourne Cup